Marketing sure has changed over the years. The days of having to sit and watch television commercials during your favorite shows are gone thanks to DVR; magazine subscriptions are at an all-time low, and most people don’t even have their local newspapers delivered anymore. Even all those beautifully designed buttons and banners created for online advertising are ignored for the most part. People have become immune to them.
With traditional marketing methods having less of an impact, how can affiliate marketers get the word out about what they have to offer in a more efficient manner? The secret may lie in content marketing.
What Exactly Is Content Marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. “
The goal with this kind of marketing is to get people to perform a particular action, such as subscribe to your list or buy something. You can also use it to develop your brand or become known as an expert in your niche.
Obviously, there is a multitude of benefits available from this kind of marketing method. Let’s discuss a few of them now.
1. Content Marketing Is Cost Effective.
Content marketing is cheap in comparison to most other internet marketing methods. However, it can be extremely time-consuming. A well planned and executed content marketing strategy will need a substantial time commitment and will not produce results right away. Of course, if you have the means, you can always outsource many of the tasks associated with content marketing. Be sure to take into consideration your ROI (return on investment) before deciding whether to produce and publish your content yourself or hire someone to do it for you.
2. It Works For Any Product Or Service.
There are no goods and services that cannot be benefited by content marketing. Regardless of whether you are an affiliate for a WordPress plugin, a PLR course, or an SEO informational product, people are looking for information on the product or service that you are offering your followers. The more information that they can find online provided by you, the more chance you have of making that sale.
3. Content Marketing Helps You Build Your Brand And Establish Yourself As An Expert In Your Niche.
Imagine you are an affiliate marketer for a product that assists with traffic generation. If you have chosen this as your particular area of expertise and have already published a good amount of content giving your readers, followers, subscribers and fans quality information on this topic, they will be more likely to trust you when it comes to your recommendation of the product. When they go to Google looking for information on traffic generation, they have a greater chance of seeing your content in response to their inquiry. The amount of content created on an individual topic gives you an authoritative voice on the subject and establishes you as the expert in that niche. On the other hand, if you were to have never produced content on the subject, who is to say you know anything about it at all?
There are many more benefits of implementing a content marketing strategy into your affiliate marketing business, but I’m sure you can see by these three examples how it could be of assistance to you as an affiliate marketer. Remember, content is not only articles or blog posts; you can produce graphics, videos and other shareable items that can go viral on social networks as well. Not only that, the content that you publish, in most cases, will be there forever. The work you are putting into its creation and distribution will offer compounding results.
